Metal gate electrodes are being investigated to replace polysilicon in order to solve problems of poly-depletion effects and boron penetration for future CMOS devices. Traditionally, a polysilicon gate electrode with an overlying silicide has been used for the gate electrodes in CMOS devices. However, as device feature size continues to shrink, poly depletion becomes a serious issue. Accordingly, metal gates are being proposed. However, in order to optimize Vt in high-performance devices, the metal gates need tunable work functions for NMOS and PMOS devices similar to present polysilicon gate technology, requiring the work functions of metal gates ranging from 4.1˜4.4 eV for NMOS and 4.8˜5.1 eV for PMOS (see, B. Cheng, B. Maiti, S. Samayedam, J. Grant, B. Taylor, P. Tobin, J. Mogab, IEEE Intl. SOI Conf Proc., pp. 91–92, 2001). Several methods have been suggested for tuning the work functions. Metal inter-diffusion gate based on diffusion between two metals during thermal reaction, yields two work function values that are strongly dependent on the metal material properties. Nitrogen implantation into a single metal has also been suggested to tune the work functions.
Recently, fully silicided metal gates have been demonstrated based on the extension of existing self-aligned silicide (SALICIDE) technology. In this approach, polysilicon is deposited over the gate dielectric. Ni is deposited over the polysilicon and reacted to completely consume the polysilicon resulting in a fully silicided metal gate rather than a deposited metal gate. The fully silicided metal gate provides a metal gate with the least perturbation to the conventional process and avoids contamination issues. Furthermore, poly doping has been shown to affect the work function of NiSi metal gates. Methods for improving the performance of fully silicided NiSi gates are needed for CMOS applications.